


absence makes the heart grow hot and bothered

by ms bricolage (onefootforward)



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: F/M, instead you just upload all of your tumblr onto ao3, sorry - Freeform, this is what happens when you want to write but are too lazy to do so
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-28
Updated: 2014-12-28
Packaged: 2018-03-03 22:34:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,167
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2890442
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/onefootforward/pseuds/ms%20bricolage
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Bellamy??”</p><p>He raises his head, feels a body fall behind him – Spacewalker, he thinks distantly, probably passed out because he’s a fucking wimp – and stares into Clarke’s bloody face.</p><p>He stutters, “How are you – why are you. What.”</p><p>Clarke snorts, which makes him consider the possibility that this isn’t an illusion, “Gods, you’re so useless, how did you get yourself captured already, honestly.”</p><p>But she’s grinning. Clarke Griffin is grinning at him, which is. Unusual. This is unusual.</p><p>“Clarke,” he croaks, then abruptly remembers that he’s not pathetic, and says, “you’re alive.”</p><p>Smart. Real smart Bellamy.</p><p>(that reunion fic that literally no one was asking for. except me. written before the episode where there was actually a bellarke reunion.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	absence makes the heart grow hot and bothered

**Author's Note:**

> one day i shall write things that are not these two idiots being idiots without each other, and with each other, and just in general, but today will not be that day.
> 
> also ft. anya being annoyed with the general state of things!! and murphy getting beat up!! and finn being dumb!! (sometimes i am sorry that i don’t write finn with more depth, or at least finn as non-jerk, but today is also not that day)

The sun is an asshole.

Clarke squints up and scowls and then glances over to Anya stumbling next to her and scowls some more. Anya, coincidentally, is also an asshole.

But. An asshole she can’t afford to be dragging around, so.

“Have some water,” she says, foisting the bottle over; she may have let Anya loose, out of sheer practicality – it’s hard to wander around with a prisoner and the fucking blazing sun of pure evil overhead – but she definitely wasn’t trusting her to not somehow spite-dehydrate Clarke should she have Power of the Flask (aka That Container That Was In Clarke’s Grave-Robbed Clothes And Smelt Vaguely Like Dead Bodies And A Trashcan, But They’re Not Talking About It).

Anya scowls but takes the flask, because the sun is evil and there isn’t nearly enough foliage around them to hide that fact.

 _The drop ship_ , Clarke thinks, and refuses to consider stopping for a break – you stop you die, or at the very least you stop and your legs stop functioning, because let’s face it the last  _two_   _hours_  were too much, but they haven’t cottoned on quite yet.

_The drop ship and then back-up and then Mt. Weather._

It was going to work.

Anya stumbles over…something, who even knows, and Clarke laughs. It isn’t a nice sound.

Oddly enough, Anya grins back. “Bitch,” she says.

Clarke’s eyes widen, her lips pulling back in a shocked laugh.

“Asshole,” she replies, because it’s too god damn  _hot_  to be creative.

They continue to walk.

 _The drop ship_. Clarke keeps her eyes trained on Anya, her mind on the mental map that routes from  _river_  to  _Mt. Weather_  to  _crash site_.

It’ll work.

.

.

.

Bellamy is tired, and annoyed, but for some reason the tired feeling is overpowering every other one – unusual for him, but there it is – and he’s too exhausted to put up a fight.

Which is kind of the point, so.

“This is a dead end.”

Finn turns away from Murphy, the two of them in a furious conversation that somehow they both agree on, yet can’t seem to stop being pissed off about. Bellamy at least understands this feeling, although if he had more energy he’d be beating Finn’s face in. Or Murphy’s.

Honestly, he should just take Monroe and Sterling and fuck right off. This is a shit plan and they all know it, but Spacewalker is in the middle of an emotional meltdown and they’re a small enough group as it is.

“It isn’t,” Finn replies, “they know something.”

“They’re not here.”

“They  _have_  to be,”

Bellamy realizes, in retrospect, that it’s a shit idea to give an idealist a gun – everyone’s got to break sometime, and it makes sense that Finn would flip from a passive wannabe with his head up his ass to an overtly-aggressive vindicator with…well, his head up his ass.

“Well we’re too tired to do anything about it right now, so you can either go in there yourself and get killed, or you can wait until morning.” Bellamy offers, and honestly, it’s a really fucking nice offer considering how livid he thinks he should feel.

“We need to act – “

“What we  _need_  to do is sleep.” Bellamy interrupts.

Finn scowls and Sterling’s face relaxes into terrified relief. Bellamy is much more considerate towards the latter, so he starts to walk away from the grounder’s prisoner encampment, Monroe and Sterling hot on his heels.

Murphy too, but Bellamy  _literally_  does not care what happens to Murphy at this point, and is ignoring him thusly.

“Bellamy,” Finn rushes to him, “we can’t just leave them –  _Clarke_  wouldn’t just leave – “

“Fuck off.” Bellamy says – politely. Polite-ish.

“This isn’t – “

“Look,” he spits, because he’s actually quite done with being patient, thank you very much, “you killed a man today, in cold blood you executed someone and that’s all on you, but you  _did_  it, it’s over now. So can you just stop trying to fucking repent for your mistakes and  _listen_  to me?”

At the end of it Bellamy’s panting – he’s so  _tired_ , it’s been days since he’s slept and weeks since he’s had a peaceful one – and flushed and finding that if he tries really hard he can in fact still be angry right now.

But. Finn shuts up. Which is good, because even if he’s currently down to four, Bellamy is still a better leader than mania-idealist-shit-for-brains Finn Collins.

They find a safe area to hide out in until morning, and Bellamy takes first watch – he’s tired, but so is everyone else, plus. Well, he can’t quite sleep right these days without running through the plan,  _any_  plan, so this works.

He watches Finn pass out almost instantly, despite his better judgement, Sterling’s head lolling against a pile of what he’s pretty sure is animal feces – Munroe curls up near Bellamy’s feet, because Munroe is his second at the moment, and a fucking awesome human being.

Tomorrow they’re going to face the facts: Finn’s an idiot, Murphy’s an ass, and Bellamy is  _not_  going to invade grounder territory without good reason.

It isn’t really anything to go on, but Bellamy let’s Sterling take over in the next shift, and slides blissfully into a deep sleep.

.

.

.

"Don’t go that way,"

"Why  _not_.”

"Because," Anya says, just as a  _whoosh_  noise signals to the right, and Clarke finds herself staring at the wooden shaft of a spear lodged into the tree, mere micrometers from the tip of her nose, “it’s rigged.”

Clarke blinks, then backs up a few steps. Behind her she can feel smug waves of vindication practically rolling into her, but she fights them off with a scowl.

"Thanks," she deadpans, not looking back, "that was really helpful."

"You’re welcome."

Clarke chooses this moment to stomp away,  _stomp_ , not sulk, jesus, and trusts Anya to follow behind her — which is sort of dumb, because Anya knows where grounder headquarters are and Clarke pointedly does  _not_ , but the principle of the matter is that Clarke is fucking  _tired_  and  _pissed off_  that this whole fucking forest is engineered to launch at you, if you don’t know the right way to manoeuver it.

Like, shit, no wonder they never found the grounders. Anyone who actually managed to get on the right track would have been skewered.

Clarke blinks back the resounding thrum of  _Jasper, Jasper, Jasper_ that kick starts at this, because that’s a problem for another day. Instead she trudges forward and asks, “How much farther?”

Anya hums, as if she’s actually pondering giving Clarke the correct answer. “We’ll be there before sun fall,” she decides.

A few hours ago it’d been before  _high noon_ , and Clarke isn’t sure if these two terms are somehow synonymous, but either way she isn’t really awaiting reaching enemy base camp with baited breath.

But. Well, the drop ship had been a bust.

"Will they kill you?" She asks abruptly, because Clarke isn’t being dragged in at…well, spear-point, which is reassuring to absolutely  _no one_ , let’s be honest. But this is at least the third type of death-to-all-thy-enemies missile-related booby trap that Anya has warned her off of, and, well, that speaks for something. Clarke just doesn’t know what the hell that something  _is_.

Bellamy probably would. Bellamy probably would have already stormed Mt. Weather – again – though, so Clarke isn’t holding him as her role model at the moment.

"No," Anya replies, suddenly right by Clarke’s side, eyes shifting over the forest in the way that Clarke has come to recognize means there aren’t any traps _currently_ , “they will have the right to exact due punishment, but death is reserved for traitors.”

"Oh." Clarke says, and leaves it.

It wasn’t — the drop ship hadn’t been a total  _bust_ , in some regards at least. Honestly, it was because of the whole thing that Anya had even  _offered_  an alternative, otherwise Clarke would’ve been forced to follow her mother’s (absolutely  _reckless_ ) directions and sulk back to a camp that she was certain was Ark 2.0. Then it would’ve been weeks before she’d be able to convince anyone to return to Mt. Weather, if at all. If there’s one thing she’s confident of it is her mother’s complete and utter guilt preventing her from letting Clarke go off and do what she thought was right, especially since these days Clarke usually thought the most dangerous option was the one they should take.

So did Bellamy. She just…it’s — Bellamy would have listened to the situation and gone  _of fucking course we’re going back_ , and it wouldn’t even have been a point of contention. Abby was protective of Clarke in a way that made Clarke immensely uncomfortable…Abby was  _motherly_ , and it’s just —

Clarke doesn’t like to think about it. Point — she doesn’t want to go to the Ark survivors unless she’s got back-up with her.

But Anya, good, reliably annoyed yet straightforward Anya, she’d taken one look at proof of the camp’s survival and sighed and changed her plan. Because Clarke wasn’t much use as retribution, or rather, she was  _more_  useful as a hostage. Or a bargaining chip.

Regardless, they weren’t going to go to the Ark, she wasn’t going to, not until she  _knew_  she could rescue her people. And well, the grounders were going to help with that.

Maybe. If Anya wasn’t killed first.

"You aren’t —"

“ _What_ ,” Clarke snaps — again, whoops, and this time Anya yanks her to the side just as a large…something, boulder maybe, smashes into the spot she’d been standing in.

Anya sighs heavily and is the first to pull forward. Clarke laughs because she can’t think of a better option that pisses the other woman off, and well. Maybe she’ll be killed first, who knows.

.

.

.

They decide on back-tracking to the grounder’s first camp, because at least that way they can make a different choice, one that doesn’t end in Finn murdering a man, doesn’t involve Bellamy letting him.

Well. Bellamy knows that this isn’t a literal thing, but he’s willing to at least go back a few paces and reimagine how the situation went down. Because everyone from his camp is  _gone_ , and it probably wasn’t the grounders. It leaves only a few rather unsettling options, and he doesn’t trust his imagination to run on the side of optimistic.

Of course, they manage to make it about halfway back before Sterling notices something’s up. Monroe is the first to point out the sentry guards that are at least two posts farther put than the ones they’d seen on their way to the prison camp, and Murphy’s response of curling up into a ball and wheezing through clamped lips tells Bellamy that it’s probably a bad thing.

"They’re on the lookout," he pants, once Bellamy manages to move them all to a safe distance away, "they’re  _expecting_  someone, they  _know, we need to leave_  —”

"We’re not leaving." He commands, and it’s only partially because he hates Murphy that the first thing he says is a contradiction.

Finn, hands on his gun, ready to shoot —  _why_  Bellamy hadn’t gotten that thing away from him yet — is at his side in an instant.

"Why not?" He asks.

Miller wouldn’t have asked. Even Monroe and Sterling knew better than to question Bellamy’s decisions.

Clarke would’ve. Or maybe she would have implicitly understood that sentries looked for people returning, while trackers went after people who had left. She was smart that way, smart in ways that didn’t translate to emotions and impassioned crowds, smart in ways that Bellamy wasn’t always.

But — she was fucking  _stupid_  when it came to lightly managing people, so Bellamy is actually kind of used to this.

"They’re  _expecting_  someone,” he explains, but he uses his  _you are a gigantic moron, honestly_  voice, because fuck, no one’s perfect, “they’re not expecting _us_.”

"Oh."

"Right."

"So," Finn asks, eyes flitting around the forest, "what do we do?"

And it’s — he doesn’t want to admit it, because he’s fearsome and charismatic, he  _knows_  he is, obviously, but he’s also…it’s not that he’s  _scared_. Nervous maybe. The last time he led a group of people it had ended in mass casualties, it had ended to him in hand cuffs and right back where he started, only at least this time Octavia was free, likely alive even.

Last time he had done this, he’d done it wrongly. He was a firm advocate of _once is a learning opportunity, twice is a fuck-up_ , so he soothes back the piece of him that argues for charging headfirst, for beating the head in of anyone who even  _thinks_  about standing between him and his people.

"We wait," he says, "and we watch."

.

.

.

It hadn’t been a dumb idea. Clarke didn’t have dumb ideas, she had…misdirected ones. She didn’t have all the facts, or she operated under incorrect information, or — well…it hadn’t been dumb, it had just been  _wrong_.

She strains at the rope around her wrists and manages to tug her hand through a little bit, just enough to put pressure on her thumb in a way that she guesses will cut off circulation in about twenty minutes or so. Rather than contemplate a future without her fingers — really, she ought to be contemplating a future without her  _head_  — she glares at Anya.

"I thought you said death was reserved for treason?"

Anya, who has been way too fucking calm throughout this whole process, nods. “It is.”

They walk a few paces forward, two grounders at their front, two at their back, and a whole fuck-ton of spears being pointed in their general direction, considering both prisoners are tied up. Clarke caves.

"Then what is  _this_?” She hisses, turning around enough so that she can shoot Anya a glare, before one of their kidnappers elbows her and forces her head forward.

"Punishment," Anya replies, and Clarke is really regretting not asking for more details.

“Punishment,” she mouths, but under her breath because she happens to  _like_ her life, most days, “fucking  _punishment_  she says.”

They make it to the middle of the camp, Clarke using this time to wedge a few more fingers out of their restraints (and possibly into future amputation, who knows, she’s more focused on freedom than functionality at this point) and to take in the scenery. Or, rather, lack-thereof. The grounders evidently base camp life on the same principles they base everything else on – disarray, chaos, and absolutely way too much grime.

Like,  _come on_ , this isn’t Earth starting from the beginning, there is still  _history_ that had once been here, history built somewhat around basic notions of hygiene, and  _health standards_ , god, they are all going to get infections like this, honestly it’s just sheer laziness.

She’s forced out of this line of thought when the grounders in front of her tug her to the side and toss her to her knees –  _rude_  – and then Anya’s joining her, face much more stoic than Clarke’s is. Clarke can’t decide if she’s more affronted about their current treatment or the state of cleanliness  _in camp_ , so she just huffs in the face of potential death and sets about using the steel of her (stolen) boots to maybe work off some more of the fraying rope.

It’s not much, but hey, better a shitty plan than no plan at all – which,  _yes_ , she realizes is what got her here in the first place, please shut  _up_  inner monologue, thanks.

In a flurry of movement, which she sort of understands, and harsh language, which she definitely  _doesn’t_ , Anya begins…negotiating, or perhaps pleading – actually, more likely, in Anya’s case at least, she’s forcibly preventing herself from shouting, it’s kind of a constant state of Anya’s, to be unimpressed and pissed-off. She’s talking up at some lady dressed in a mish-mash of combat pants, military grade boots, and animal skins, who is flanked by several different warriors, so Clarke’s guessing that this must be the head honcho.

She still has no clue what’s going on. It’s frustrating to be back facing these people, but somehow reassuring; at least with the grounders she knew that the default was  _maim, kill, protect_. With Dante and his fucked-up merry band of hostages she’d never really  _known_ , not for sure, where she stood.

Which like, makes it somewhat frustrating to have Ms. Badass with a Two-Sided Spear (yeah. Clarke had noticed) gesture towards her and say, “What do you need?”

Clarke blinks slowly, maybe a stall for a time, maybe just,  _what_.

“What?”

“For the rescue,” she clarifies, impatient, “what do you need?”

“Uhm,” Clarke drags out, “who are we rescuing?”

It’s Anya’s heavy sigh – a welcomingly familiar sound at this point – that has Clarke shifting her weight back and pulling her knees forward, her now totally free hands pushing her body off the ground. It’s better to be standing when you’re completely and utterly confused, but also about 60% sure you’re not going to die.

Which is, well, it’s also a familiar situation for Clarke, at this point.

Ms. Badass – that’s it, until someone clues Clarke into a name – nods for Anya to be freed the moment Clarke is upright, which probably means she knew what Clarke was up to all along, which means that Clarke is much happier to go along with this conversation.

“The Mountain Men’s prisoners.” She says, her tone conveying the same general impatience that Anya has. Maybe it’s a grounder thing.

“The Mountain – oh.  _Oh_ ,” Clarke gapes, and then when it appears that no one is willing to explain  _what the fuck just happened_ , continues, “I don’t know yet. Depends on what you have.”

Because – hey, better to go along with it.

“We have men and weapons,” she says.

That’s – not  _unhelpful_ , not technically. Clarke turns to Anya, who’s upright at this point. “Any chance you could maybe catch me up?”

Anya glances up at the boss-lady, who nods once, succinct, and then turns back to Clarke. “They are willing to negotiate peace with your people if you can get ours out of the Mountain Men’s camp.”

“An act of goodwill?”

“Consider it a show of faith.” Anya replies, and then after a moment of consideration admits, “You are the only one to have infiltrated the inner barriers of the prison.”

And – okay, it’s the  _plan_. Honestly, Clarke has grown so accustomed to plans not actually working the first time around that she hadn’t told Anya that  _yeah_ , the Ark being back meant peace with the spacelings was more important, and that maybe an impromptu plea for rescue was a wise gesture, with any semblance of the scheme actually panning out.

But.  _But._

Clarke grins, then reaches into the waistband of her pants, where the Mt. Weather internal map lies, and says,

“That’s not even the best part,”

.

.

.

It takes approximately an hour and a half for Finn to use his newfound  _fuck the system_  mentality to completely screw over Bellamy’s plan.

Not a complete surprise. What  _is_  startling is the fact that Murphy is the one to help him do it. Bellamy had pegged the little shit for being too scared to actually do…well, anything besides wheezing on the floor and begging them to leave.

Monroe approaches him and says, “They’ve left,” and somehow Bellamy’s only reaction is to succumb to the inevitable.

“Alright,” he says, “let’s go.”

It’s almost sunset when they’re marched into the camp, Murphy at the head of the prisoner-conga-line because he’s whimpering and bruised and definitely a good poster-boy for the ruthlessness that is the culture of the grounders, Sterling at the back because he’s the youngest and Bellamy knows that the best chance of escape is at the back; no one trails after them.

Finn had evidently decided he was enough of a sleuth to sneak into the grounder’s camp undetected, and armed enough to deal with any unaccounted-for detection, and as per usual had fucked the whole thing right up. But, well, Bellamy had followed him, purely out of sentimentality, so it’s at least partially his fault that they’re in this situation.

One of these days he’s going to learn to lead with his head instead of his gut – to lead at least  _more_  with his head than his gut, and that day is not going to come soon enough.

Well. That day might not come at all now. He’s not really sure what the protocol is for people who destroy major portions of enemy populations, but he can’t imagine it’s a great one. Murphy may have survived rounds one and two in grounder prison, purely because the rest of the delinquents had been alive then, but once one of them gives up information about the Ark encampment then surely they’ll all be dead.

These are the thoughts running through his head as they march through the internal portion of the camp, half his energy on chewing out the nearest guard and the other half devoted purely to fucking around with Murphy, when a voice pierces through the glum,

“Bellamy??”

He raises his head, feels a body fall behind him – Spacewalker, he thinks distantly, probably passed out because he’s a fucking  _wimp_  – and stares into Clarke’s bloody face.

He stutters, “How are you –  _why_  are you. What.”

Clarke snorts, which makes him consider the possibility that this  _isn’t_  an illusion, “Gods, you’re so  _useless_ , how did you get yourself captured already, honestly.”

But she’s grinning. Clarke Griffin is  _grinning_  at him, which is. Unusual. This is unusual.

“Clarke,” he croaks, then abruptly remembers that he’s not  _pathetic_ , and says, “you’re alive.”

 _Smart. Real smart Bellamy_.

She feels the same way, because she snickers, “Wow, really.”

Then she’s at his side, saying something to the guard –  _how_  is she  _saying_ something to the guard, why aren’t they trying to torture her,  _what is going on_.

“C’mon,” she says, tugging him up and patting his shoulder, “we’ve got some people to save,”

And, because Bellamy isn’t a total idiot, just apparently one out of the loop, he follows.

.

.

.

Two months later, three-hundred kilometers and one near-escape that leaves Clarke with considerably less hair and Bellamy with several years off his life, and they finally manage to find a good place to settle for the winter months. Clarke uses the smattering of grounder-speak that she picked up to negotiate a safe-space, land and pocket of time, and the kids somehow negotiate for five weird tent-apparatuses using a mixture of hand gestures and Monty’s moonshine. Clarke is fairly certain that they can trade their way up to a rather nice life using solely Monty’s moonshine – she’s also positive she can convince him to mass-produce the stuff, if only because post-Mt. Weather Monty is like a duckling, crazy attached and prone to trailing after Clarke during the day. She’s not above admitting it’s adorable.

She’s setting up a fire when Bellamy wanders nearby, mumbling something about  _suicidal tendencies_ and  _could’ve handled it_ , when Clarke catches him off-guard by throwing a handful of rocks in the general vicinity of his face.

“What the hell Clarke,” he sputters.

“Your muttering is getting a little too pointed,” she says primly, then turns back to the fire.

He shuffles closer, then a hand is drifting gently over the shorn hairs near her ear, a soothing stroke that is completely at odds with the angry words which tumble out of his throat, “You’re  _such_  an idiot.”

“Hey,” she grins, leaning into his hand, “hey, now, who saved your ass from certain death?”

Bellamy groans, but there’s an amused tone to it, “Why, Clarke, seriously – when are you going to give that up?”

“Never,” she avows, and then giggles –  _shit_ , that’s embarrassing, “I’ll never forget that stupid-ass look on your face.”

“Liar,” he grins, turning her around so that his hand can continue its trek to the other side of her head, where the hair hadn’t become quite so burnt, leaving Clarke with somewhat of a lopsided style she’s sure.

She continues, “How you were in the middle of swearing at Trevon,” one of the younger grounders who had been part of the Mt. Weather unit, sweet guy, great with a knife and some bow-string, “kicking Murphy in the face and being utterly  _helpless_  without me.”

His smile turns soft around the edges, although that could just be the light of the fire, even though Clarke knows by now that Bellamy is a gigantic  _sap_  of a human being, housed in sardonic wit and general discontentment.

“Yeah,” he admits, “I think I might be,” and uses his grip to tilt her head up, pressing his lips to hers with a sudden fierceness that belies the emotion behind the soft words.

(It’s not ten minutes later when Bellamy finally resurfaces for air with a spluttering look on his face and cries, “No  _wait_ , I’m mad at you, you can’t keep bringing that  _up_  Clarke,”

Clarke simpers, “C’mon, you know near-death events get you all hot and bothered,”

And. Well, it’s not  _untrue_.)


End file.
